Monday, March 26, 2012

So most exciting thing of this week is the very first Baptism
invitation Elder Dudley extended was accepted! We've got a baptism
coming up in a few weeks! The investigator, who is our age, is really
ready to recieve the Gospel. He called us after one of the lessons we
had and said he felt peaceful (meaning he felt the Spirit,) and he
says at church, he feels like its home. Super awesome guy.

We've seen some other amazing miracles this week. Today, we were at an
ATM machine, and this lady come up to us and said "After you walked
past me, God told me to 'give those missionaries money'" We declined
the money, and she ended up commiting to visit Mormon.org. Another
little miracle this week was we went up and started talking to a man.
When we asked if him we could give him a card for our church, he said
"perfect". We later invited to be baptized after we talked to him for a
couple of minutes, and he said "perfect" again. Yes, baptism is the
first step to how we can become perfect. He told us though that he
works out of state a lot, and that he's only home on Weekends, so
we're hoping next weekend turns out to be good. :)

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

So, my new missionary is ................. Elder Dudley. He's from Idaho. Yes, there are a lot of potatos there. Yes, his last name is the same as Harry Potter's cousin. He likes Soccer, played for 8 years, along with wrestling and many other assorted sports that I'm not cut out for. Its been a good experience for him out here so far.

He's an awesome missionary! He wants to talk to me in Spanish all the time, wants to say something in every contact we make. He just really wants to do the best he can. The second day he was here, we taught a member a lesson, and after the lesson, the member said he doesn't speak a ton of Spanish, but he speaks with a really strong Spirit. For only 2 months of speaking spanish, he does have good Spanish. Its funny that he can't beleive some of the, um, interesting conversations we have, were as I'm just used to them. :)

He's even already got to help a less active member move, from a 3rd floor apartment to another 3rd floor apartment. He's also getting used to the mission really fast. It took me about 2 weeks to break out of the initial "shell shock," but he is already getting out of it.

So yeah, thats Elder Dudley.

The work still goes on!

Thanks everybody!

Elder Clark

P.S. There are pictures today. :)

This is what we do when we're bored on P-day, Triscuts and easy cheese :)

Yes, that is a pink monkey, long story... also the last picture I took with Elder May.

Monday, March 12, 2012

So another exciting week has gone by, and a lot of really exciting things are happening in the mission, and in our area, but they can wait for after the funny story.

So there was a baptism this week in Cumorah, and we went up to see it. The person baptized was the brother of a member, and because of his Sister's example, he eneded up getting baptized. I should have known this was going to be an interesting baptism when they asked me to play the piano. I don't play the piano. Well, not well, especially not hymns. Most of the time, I can barely manage the right hand, sometimes only one note at a time. I'm apparently the best player in our district too, because I always play for district meeting. Anyways, when its time for the actual baptism to happen, the baptizer and the one being baptised go up into the font, and the missionaries go up to open the curtain. In describing the experience later, they said they didn't think the curtain locked. Needless to say, they couldn't open the curtain. This went on for about 3 minutes, everybody trying all these random keys, the branch president ran to his office to look for keys, somebody else ran another direction. Luckily, Elder Spear saved the day! He had keys that he didn't know what they were for, and he figured he might as well try to open the curtain, and it worked. So lesson learned, make sure that you have verified the baptism is going to be visible before everybody shows up.

On Sunday, right before church, the branch president came up and asked us "Do any of you Elders play the piano." Everybody looked at me. I thoughtt "great, not again." The good news is that I didn't have to play. :)

So now for the exciting stuff.

Everybody asks me how my Spanish is, even the president asked me a couple of weeks ago how good it was. Well, its good enough for me to be a trainer...

Yep, I'm training this next transfer, and I'm staying here too. I found out early last week, and have already gone to a meeting for trainers. I'm excitited, and feel unqualified, but It's going to be awesome.

So other exciting news is our mission is pushing for 100 baptism a month now. When the general authority came a few weeks ago, he talked a lot about it. Since then, President Wolfert has also talked a lot about it. I'm super excitited to see this start happening. We've talked a lot about raising our vision, increasing our faith, talking to everybody, and inviting people to follow Christ. We're turning our mission into "A culture of baptism," even inviting people we talk to in the street to follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized.

So Monday, I did have a good birthday. It was p-day, so the first part wasn't anything spectacular. In the evening, the Hermana that is in charge of the dinner calander through a suprise party for me. I wasn't really a surprise though, becuase its impossible for Elder May to tell lies. By suprise party, I mean the Family we were supposed to visit canceled on us, and then they and another family showed up at a family home evening we were at. Random side note, this branch loves to have Family home evenings with like 4 families, its pretty cool. So yeah, they also got me cake. They sang happy birthday in English, then Spanish, then "ya queremos pastel" (we want cake) then "que lo muerda" which means take a bite out of it and then we'll shove your face into it. I don't know why Americans don't push the birthday person''s face into cake, its really a great experience. One of the other Elders in our branch had his birthday yesterday, and he also got to enjoy cake in his face.

So we had another hope booster this week with that family of 7 I talked about a couple weeks back. We've been wating for a call from their dad, who said "yo les marco" which basically means "i'm telling you that I'll call you, but most likely means I won't" So we randomly stopped by their house. Amazingly, they pulled up right before us, making it the second time that has happened, which is kind of weird. So we parked out of sight and walked over to them. They told us that some of their family is in a really difficult situation. Luckily, there is a super good lawyer in the Cumorah Branch that is super cheap and every missionary has his number. So we were able to help this family a little bit, and hopefuly they're being humbled a little bit. The Father told us again that he called us, but it seamed a lot more likely this time.

We had a big tornado warning this week and there was crazy thunder and lightining with tons of rain, and even tornado sirens going off. We were ready in a moments notice to jump into the bathtub and put a mattress over us. The night passed, and the tornado came nowhere close to us, so that was exciting.

Lisa speaking: Just to show how the missionaries are taken care of, here is the extended version from the letter to the family

We did have a huge tornado warning, there were even tornado sirens in our area that went off for about 20 minutes at about 10 PM. The sirens were a few miles away though, so we could barely hear them. It did rain and thunder a lot that night, but that was it. President Wolfert wanted all the diistrict leaders to repart to the Zone leaders by 8 am the next day that everybody was safe, and wanted all zoneleaders to tell the Assistants before 9am, and he didn't want us leaving our apartment until he heard everybody was safe and the tornado had passed. So we were well taken care of. If the tornado had come, we were prepared to get in the bathtub under a mattress. I don't know if I would fit in the bathtub like that!

I have photos this week!

I hope all you guys had an awesome week to!

Elder Clark :)

Me and Cake!

Me standing awkwardly by the cake. The guy looking unsupicously is the one that pushed my face into the cake.